hi everyone welcome to take two of day three of the big f calm Skillshare project sorry if you caught the end of that last one I'm just having some technical issues but I'm very excited to be welcoming Andrew Blair to our first session to tell us all about experience you're learning and so Andrew Blair is a freelance trainer and facilitator he has spent nearly 20 years supporting leaders and managers with their interpersonal skills to achieve successful strategic relationships and deliver clear messages with high personal impact he offers individual coaching and group training design and delivery with specialisms in online coaching and experiential learning which is what we're going to be hearing about today and hopefully some some lovely insight from the expert there and before becoming freelance he worked as the creative director of learning out roleplay UK by he specialized in improving personal and team communication using innovative learning techniques and art direction of corporate training Phil's films and so a nice range of work across the learning and development field so I can just see him joining there and I'm just going to add him live session and so we just gotta wait for him to connect but yes he's Andrews actually got a past affiliation with Africa he was nominated to leave one an difficult Larry in the world some years ago so lovely to have you here Andrew hi welcome just giving you a bit of an intro to the people listening and we've got some questions to kick off this discussion about experiential learning and so I really wanted to start at the beginning and could you start off by giving a definition of experimenting and how how it be used in the Learning and Development field well good afternoon everyone and yeah it's a it is quite straightforward really it's learning by doing that's what it is it's a methodology we though that really takes it beyond that suppose just doing it over and over again it is reflection and on that process so once you've done it what happened what can you learn what can you do better you know if you jump in the deep end why did you drown that let's not do that so you know really reflect on the learning as you go and your experience for you as an individual it's what you're trying to do it's been around for a while you know with Confucius I can't even say his name and tells off you know I do something and I understand it and it's getting that understanding before you have to apply it in the workplace or your life completely yeah that makes the makes absolute sense why why learn if you're not going to embed that into the into the way you move forward so great to hear about it but what are the techniques and resources that can it can involve what does it actually look like in practice I think it's going to be an activity you can't just passively receiving the information it's just not about transmitting a message or the learning that needs to be taken aboard you can't just transmit it you have to have some kind of activity to give you cause to as I said earlier to reflect on what was your experience of it because it will be different or individuals so in that respect it's quite learner centric really it's about how it works for you our physicality is different our experiences are all different of life so I will find an actual new experience or trying to apply learning it's going to be different we're gonna be good at some things how we're not going to be sickened at others and it's only to you personally have a go at something that you're going to find out which of those you need to focus on completely and now I know you do a very exciting thing which is using lots of actors in your training can you tell me a little bit about how that experiential training field yeah I'm not one of the really interesting things about experience your learning is the level of immersion so how far can you take it and where it's safe and you're not endangering anyone and how real can you make it and one of the things you can do particularly with soft skills around communication performance management coaching difficult conversations change management personal resilience coaching these can or because their conversations opposite people you can actually recreate that in the room and of course you can create that online now by using professional actors sometimes in the past then they've called it role play the other colleagues in the same organization and that really doesn't work it's really not a good experience for anyone you need professionals on the other side who can guarantee you consistency and the behaviors that they may generate towards you and can raise the challenge because you may be very confident once again as I said we've learner centric somebody's very good you can raise the level of challenge in terms of the behaviors that you're presenting or they might come up against in the field whether that's as a a service provider in a hospital doctors nurses or whether you're managing people you've got different degrees of behavior coming at you and the actor can present those and can present them against learning competencies so it works really well yeah that sounds fantastic a really exciting way to learn and so interesting to hear how how learner focus there is and how much bit it can be made specific to et cetera and that sounds really great and so it sounds from we've been saying like it works across there any specific teaching areas in which it works best and anything it was really you know it's really working I think these certainly the soft skills that I mentioned worked really well it gets harder when you're onto because there's basically two things involved that the person themselves applying the learning and the environment or the context that they're going to have to deliver it and compliant so it's how real can you make that context that application so it's interesting online at the moment people say you can't do much experiential learning online to fit a boy alone you need to train someone to do that it's quite hard to do online but many many things can be done particularly when it's the person-to-person that need you quite a bit on augmented reality we've got a full set on and you're pretending another 3d world and that's quite useful for dangerous of course but for just normal communication experiencial interaction is the way to go because we really learn began a legacy a motor memory and an emotional memory from having been through it so consequently we're more confident and our confidence makes us more motivated to actually maybe have that conversation or do what we've got to do completely now you did but I know you also do lots of virtual and and online training and that's obviously something people are talking a lot about at the moment and I just wondered how how can we combine experience or element which feels very live with the virtual training offering that back now you work on I think now it's moving to more called blended solutions so this accommodates different learning styles which is great but also different rituals groups organizations so online learning it's basically computer-based and is one just learner centric again and but the learner it's going to interact with that at the wrong time at their own place where they want and in their location so when you move on to virtual training which is more of what we're doing at the moment you're definitely going to have an online facilitator involved there some kind of trainer but they are going to be a separate location and this is when the area of simulation creating that context that environment has to be done online with technology there you've got some really smart use of their meeting rooms webinars that have characters suddenly appearing in your meeting while crews this just popped it on the screen here and and having a conversation with them or instructing them or coaching them or just going feeling what their life and because you've got that interaction experiential element you can get live feedback there and then and that's really great for the participant for the learner personal feedback on what works what doesn't what just feel for it you know execute it here that to hear that you can use actors and that live element in in the virtual worlds as well sometimes we think that can be really limited so it's really cool to hear how that can be combined and so just to finish I guess about why I mean I talked about it over the course of this session but why is experience learning so valuable in a Learning and Development space what what is it about it it's such a amazing tool for actually embedding there's a couple of things so first is the level of engagement because people are doing something that kind of they have to be engaged and you have to engage people in the process and then the learning and having gone through it I mentioned motor memory emotional memory that have really helps retain the learning but when you want to recall it in the workplaces when you need it and that's what you need to use it in the workplace and what experience you're learning does in terms of organizations and yourself is it makes the learning process quicker so flash to bang start to finish you're gonna learn quicker faster more effectively and that's why people invest in it it sounds like a really a really exciting way of learning and so before he finishes there anything else that you'd like to add experiential learning or the kind of work that you're doing to the session I think I would really encourage people to both as learners or people who are designing learning to really try and get this element into their training they sometimes leave it out because it's easier its transmitted or it's online because you can blend those solutions to have the information online some virtual webinar and then maybe actually in the workplace we've been doing it for years as a society with apprenticeships you know you learn on the job so it's combining all the knowledge we have now so really think about how you can build this in to your learning design and if you're a learner just got to get off the chair have a go you will learn from it so I really encourage participation and commitment to experiencing it yeah thank you it sounds like really really great technique well thank you so much for joining me Andrew and yeah you'll be able to find a recording of this on RIT TV and also on our on our website where you'll also be able to find details how to find out more about 100 us we've got two more sessions today so please do tune in at 3 p.m. and at Fulham at 3 p.m. we'll be hearing about ideas on how to think inside the books in order to think outside it and at 4 p.m. we'll be hearing all about how to get less interested in your events so thank you so much joining you thank you to everyone who tuned in and hopefully see you later today thank you very much everyone bye